By Alieu Amara Suwu
Union of Academic Staff Association (UASA) that comprises academic staff associations of University of Sierra Leone, Njala University, Ernest Bai Koroma University, Milton Margai Technical University and Eastern Technical University have compromised to lay down strike actions following government commitment to address concerns and challenges.
This compromise is reached after several negations between the government and the union, including meeting held between the Parliamentary Committee on Technical and Higher Education Committee and staff of the UASA. The Government of Sierra of Leone has a soft heart for human capital development. And because of this, the issue which would have deterred and disrupted the academic process, the Government has swiftly stood in to ameliorate it.
Dr. Haja Ramatulai Wurie, Minister of Technical and Higher Education (MTHE), in the meeting explained that few days after assuming office, she held a meeting with the Ministry of Technical and Higher Education (MTHE) and the Ministry of Finance to discuss issues around financing for the universities, and the outcome of that meeting was to set up three subcommittees: one to look at the memorandum of understanding that was signed in 2019 during the last strike, to look at look at the backlog that was due to the universities in terms of granting aid backlog, and the severance benefit. Mentioning concerns raised, such as granting aid backlogs and severance benefits that was due to the institutions, staff that were promoted in 2019 but not been reflected in their take home, their conditions of service with regards to promotion, and percentage increase in line with the rate of inflation, she revealed that theses backlogs will be factored into the 2024 budget, which has brought ease.
She took into account that the effects of the free quality education where they have over 130,000 students having the minimum entry requirements to go into universities, but only have a handful of six tertiary institutions in country, which cannot accommodate all of those numbers. So, she said they need to start thinking of infrastructural development; they also need to start thinking of financial management systems and technology and digitalization to help them in terms of efficiency, transparency, accountability, and so on. She added that they should be looking at the revenue streams for them to be able to finance themselves from internally generated funds with government providing support.
Hon. Joseph William-Lamin, Chairman of the Technical and Higher Education Committee in Parliament, described the meeting as a successful one having arrived at pathways. He said as government it is their responsibility to see that education is accessed by all – a commitment he said they have made and so will not let it go down the drain.
Dr. Brima Gegbe, President of the Union, outline several concerns ranging from backlogs, adjustment of salaries due to inflation, subventions, delays in implementations of 2022-2024 conditions of service to others. He also forwarded several recommendations.
Professor Edwin Momoh, said that the minister actually spoke by way of protocol; she spoke everything about what they will have done by way of protocol that ended that discussion. However, with thanks to the academic staff associations, he said they are aware of the fact that they would want to be of assistance to them as administration, but there are limits to certain concerns to be raised.
“Issues that are administrative, we had raised those with the Ministry and issues that pertain to welfare of their constituents, they could easily raise those. So, my fear is that it does seem to me that we as administrators may have sent them to raise these concerns of administration and to which I am bringing this disclaimer that we have nothing to do with those. They may just have thought them through. But we had already done that with the Ministry of Education and discussions are on the way and we are aware of the goodwill of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry and Education,” he said.
Copy right –Printed in the Expo Times Week end Newspaper on Friday 13th October, 2023 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)